


A Battle Hard Fought

by darkhavens



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7870459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkhavens/pseuds/darkhavens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will reflects on his life-long internal battle, the ways in which Jack has made it harder, and what should happen when it's over.</p>
<p>aka: Will decides enough is enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Battle Hard Fought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [outsideth3box](https://archiveofourown.org/users/outsideth3box/gifts).



> I didn't realise it had been a year since the finale until the tumblr/AO3 celebrations had already happened. This has been sitting in gdocs for months, waiting to be tweaked and polished, and I finally got my arse into gear and did it. 
> 
> I didn't dare look at the show until after the finale screened, because I loved the source material so much I was terrified it would be ruined. I missed 3 years of amazing fandom interaction, but I've spent the last year playing catchup.
> 
> I also dragged a good friend in after me, and this is gifted to her.
> 
> #itsstillbeautiful.

The fall was Will's final attempt to put an end to it all, his last blow in the fight against becoming that which he'd spent most of his life trying not to become.

From early childhood, he’d been told that certain feelings, certain thought patterns, certain _abilities_ he was apparently born with, were wrong, incompatible with humanity, with nature, with _polite society_.

If his childhood counselling sessions had ever been found by the police recruitment board, or the FBI, neither organisation would have hired him, but he knows he would never have been allowed to return to anonymous obscurity. He would, almost certainly, have ended up on some sort of watch list, regarded as a ticking time bomb attached to a faceless clock.

But the visits were scattered the length and breadth of the country, random clusters in multiple clinics in a couple of dozen and more port towns and cities, some of which were memories so fragmented and intertwined, he'd long ago ceased trying to tease them apart.

Along the way, he learned how to pretend to not be what he’d always been told he shouldn't be. He was too young to realise that 'normal' was an unattainable dream for everyone, just that much further out of reach for some than others, so he always fell short but never entirely stopped trying.

He became terrified of eye contact; scared of seeing too much, feeling too much, absorbing too much of the person unintentionally laying themselves bare to him. He tried not to socialise more than the minimum contact necessary to get through life, so no-one got close enough to see what a freak he really was inside.

He would've gone to his grave believing he was unnatural, carrying within him a corruption that must be fought against at all costs. And then Jack introduced him to Dr Hannibal Lecter, who saw straight into the heart of that corruption and embraced it. He fed, nurtured and encouraged the stifled seed, eager to see it blossom and bear strange and beautiful fruit.

Yet still Will fought; it was all he knew. Each time Jack demanded he strip away his defences and wallow in the bittersweet rot of some other soul's corruption, Will had to fight that much harder to scourge his own soul clean of those wants and desires, of those _needs_ that resonated so closely with those he denied himself.

Killing and displaying Randall Tier was as thrilling as it was terrifying; even moreso in the days that followed. The memories were fertile soil and a fresh mountain spring where before there had only been dust and ash and acid tears. Roots burrowed deep and grew fast, dandelion insidious. Will kept everything that showed above ground trimmed short and pruned back to bare stubs for Jack’s approval, and told himself it was all going to plan.

Memories and dreams merged, mutated, metastasized.

Freddie Lounds alive, aflame, become Shiva still screaming with outrage.

Mason Verger’s head beneath his knife, peeled like an apple; one long bloody curl of skin and scalp from which to roll a whole bouquet of roses, a courting gift.

A new life with Hannibal. No more hiding in the shadows, no more ruthless self-denial and endless self-deception. Acceptance. A family.

And every morning, on waking, he knew it wasn’t real, would never be real. Because of Abigail. Because of Jack. Because he could never be that happy; it wasn’t allowed, wasn’t possible. It wasn’t, wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, _can’t be real_.

He made his choice, made his phone call, made his mad dash to head Jack off from haring after Hannibal.

In return, he gained a permanent smile and lost a daughter; lost a future he’d never truly believed in and gained a broken heart. Gained two of those, really. Hannibal’s own, displayed so openly before the altar in Palermo’s Norman Chapel, was the most romantic gesture anyone had ever made towards Will. It stole his breath away every time he thought about it.

And yet he _still_ kept right on fighting, kept resisting, kept denying them both. 

Oh, he had his weak moments. Whispering his forgiveness into the dark maw of the catacombs, he would have gone to his knees and bared his throat to Hannibal if he’d only asked.

His half-mad dash to Lithuania and the Lecter property was him running both to and from his destiny, as pretentious as he knows that would sound if he said it out loud.

He’s not sure he could explain the thought processes involved in deciding to help Chiyoh free herself from her wardenship, but he did it knowing that Hannibal would be proud of his accomplishment. And prouder still of the firefly monument he left to mark his place there.

Getting shot in the shoulder, _again_ , after stupidly drawing a knife in public; having an electric blade buzzing against his skull, about to expose his brains for Hannibal’s consumption; being transported to their doom like already slaughtered cattle; almost having his face peeled off without anaesthetic… all of this made him believe they’d both be safer apart.

He was ready to let Hannibal go. He _encouraged_ Hannibal to go, to run, to be safe, free to continue his particular brand of extra-curriculars. And he was sure Hannibal had known what he was doing before he’d even finished doing it.

#

Molly and Wally were his last desperate grasp at normality. Three years of soft hands and soft words and softheartedness. Three years of filling every waking moment with action and busywork, anything to prevent his mind from wandering back to the corridors and cells he knew only too well from personal experience.

Three years of trying and pretending and believing he could do this, that it could be enough.

And then Jack forced his way back into Will’s carefully constructed reality and, just that easily, everything crumbled. Molly was too good a person to turn away Jack with his earnest claims of only wanting to save families. She had faith that Will would come back to her, to their normal _perfectly normal_ life, never mind that Will had told her that doing this would change him.

Too late, Will realized he’d kept his secrets too well. Molly had no idea who he was, what he was, or who and what he would or could be when this was over. If it ever was.

Seeing Hannibal for the first time in three years was revelatory. Mental forts, painstakingly built and maintained over the last three years, collapsed to so much powdery dust that drifted away with his first unsteady exhalation. 

If he saw Molly again after this, he knew it would only be to say goodbye.

#

Putting his hand on Chilton’s shoulder was a wholly calculated move, done with full knowledge of the way Dolarhyde’s psychosis would interpret the gesture. Payment for the prying and spying, prodding and poking he’d endured under the good doctor’s care. Bedelia called him on it when he tried to obfuscate, and the Will Graham who answered was the one who had festered in silence and darkness for over thirty years.

The first unfettered breath he took after that admission was the sweetest, easiest breath he’d ever drawn. To thank her, he took the time and effort to warn her that Hannibal was about to ‘escape’. When her only response was to belittle him, he gave a mental shrug and pencilled her name onto the bottom of his to-do list. He knew Hannibal must have a plan for her; he was sure she’d earned every meticulously scripted part of it.

If there was a portion of her left breathing once Hannibal was done, however, Will decided he would claim his own pound or so of flesh, at his leisure. Let her think she’d escaped with her life, let her learn to cope and manage with her new reality, and the terror in her eyes when they reappeared on her doorstep would be so much more satisfying.

#

Will felt the impact of the bullet as surely as if it had passed through Hannibal and into him. The knife to the face actually hurt less. Which is not to say that getting stabbed didn’t hurt, because it damn well did, but the gaping hole in his heart didn’t stop draining him of life until Hannibal appeared behind Dolarhyde and leapt into the fray. Seeing him up and moving, instead of lying there bleeding, gave Will the impetus he needed to fight back with intent.

Slaughtering the Red Dragon with Hannibal was the most profoundly intimate thing Will had ever done with another person. It was thrilling. Exhilarating. And then Will was in Hannibal’s arms at last, and he couldn’t imagine anything better. He couldn’t imagine letting go; shied away from the prospect of being separated for even a moment. But life was bound to try and come between them. _Jack_ was bound to try and come between them. Jack wanted Hannibal dead, and Will knew he’d never survive that.

He could only see one possible solution.

#

As soon as their feet left the edge of the bluff, Will decided that this was his final move. He’d done everything that could be expected of him, and more, to resist and repudiate his own nature, and to take Hannibal down with him. If he -if they- somehow survived this, he was going to take any last remnants of that small, scared child who’d wanted so very much to just be ‘normal’, and hold them underwater until they drowned.

When he woke to find Hannibal hovering over him, worry and relief blurred together in his eyes, the first thing Will did was reach out to hug the man close enough to hear his whispered, “Will Graham is dead.”

Hannibal’s exultant response, after wrapping himself around Will so tightly that both of them could barely breathe, was to whisper back, “Long live Will Graham.”

They had places to go and people to do, but for that brief moment they could simply be, breaths shared, blood mingling, pain borne.


End file.
